Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
With the advance of networking and data storage technologies, an increasingly large number of computing services are being provided to users or customers by cloud-based datacenters that can enable access to computing resources at various levels. Cloud-based service providers may provide individuals and organizations with a range of solutions for systems deployment and operation. Customer data (and applications) may be stored in a server or one or more virtual datacenters distributed over multiple servers.
Cloud-based service providers employ a number of security measures to ensure integrity and security of customer data and applications. A wide range of security measures may be implemented with varying resource costs. For example, a cloud-based service provider servicing banks or similar financial institutions may have to provide strong security measures regardless of the cost to ensure their customers' confidence. On the other hand, a cloud-based service provider servicing customers with least amount of security such as general service providers (e.g., weather information, traffic information providers, etc.) may employ less stringent security measures at lower resource cost.
With increased service needs, multi-tenancy cloud platforms are becoming more common. Such platforms typically employ shared resource architectures for a variety of customers like shared databases, shared schema, and so on. When customers' security needs are different, however, shared resource architecture may not be the optimal solution because a one-size-fits-all type security system may not be acceptable to high-end customers or too expensive for low-end customers.